


Medical Knowledge

by trustingHim17



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Decisions, Gen, Injury, Injury Recovery, Teaching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:42:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25756060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trustingHim17/pseuds/trustingHim17
Summary: In Rest (and elsewhere), Watson noted that he has been teaching Holmes medicine for several years, but what first prompted Holmes’ interest?
Comments: 1
Kudos: 33





	1. Chapter 1

I limped down the street, leaning heavily on my cane and dearly wishing I could find a cab—or at least that the rain would let up. It had been raining nonstop for days, and, while I was well used to my injuries complaining at the weather, there came a time when I was simply tired of hurting, tired of the constant ache throbbing and stabbing its way through my shoulder and up my leg. Was it so much to ask for one day without every movement hurting?

Apparently, so. The muscles in my leg spasmed, and I leaned against a wall to let it pass before continuing. I had learned the hard way not to try to force my way through certain spasms; it was always harder to regain my feet after a tumble than it was simply to wait out the pain.

I continued walking, counting the blocks until I would be home. I wanted to get off my feet, and I wanted to sleep, hopefully in that order. Even better would be to sleep the night through. It had been over a week since I had last slept for more than a handful of hours, mostly due to the weather, but also simply because I was busy. Trying to build a practice outside of the Army, I frequently volunteered at the nearby charity hospital, and my hours there along with the requests for help spawned by the simple presence of my bag had recently combined to keep me out of the flat more often than I was in it. With the cholera outbreak spiking in one of the poorer sections of the city, I had stayed out much later than usual today, and I was more than ready to seek my bed. The patient load never ended, but I hated turning anyone away. I could always help just one more.

_Just one more, Johnny! Come on!_

A smile escaped at the memory as I leaned on my stick to let another spasm pass. How I missed my brother! We had done everything together as boys, and he was usually the instigator whenever we landed ourselves in trouble, begging me to do whatever it was _just one more time_ until we got caught. I always pretended to be angry with him for getting us into trouble, but it never stopped me from joining him the next time, and he knew that. We had gotten along so well that I could probably count on one hand the times he had _truly_ irritated me, and the others in our small town had looked askance at seeing either of us alone more than they ever noticed the two of us together.

He never had told me why he had taken our parents’ deaths so hard, but I had mourned when he was too deep into the bottle to recognize me the last time I had seen him, after my return from Afghanistan. I could only hope he would pull through, that he would return to being the one person I could trust completely.

I shook my head, dislodging the memory. As much as I wished Harry and I could return to the friendship we had forged in childhood, I had to move on. He knew where to find me if he ever decided to put away the drink.

I changed streets, breathing a sigh of relief as the flat came into view. I longed to sit near the fire for a while. If I could warm up enough to stop hurting, maybe I would be able to sleep tonight. I was much too tired to care about finding some supper.

Unlocking the door, I tried to keep the pouring rain outside of the flat as I entered, listening for any sign of Holmes or Mrs. Hudson. I heard nothing, however, and Mrs. Hudson’s rooms were dark. Either she had already gone to bed, or she had decided to go to her sister’s after all.

On the chance that she was asleep, I tried to stay quiet as I put my coat, umbrella, and hat in their places. I left my medical bag at the base of the stairs as well, unwilling to try to carry it up to its normal place near my desk. With the way my leg was aching, I would need a hand free to use the banister, and I saw no reason to carry my bag up the stairs when I would only have to carry it down again in the morning.

Silence reigned in the rooms above me as I slowly made my way up the stairs, and I wondered what Holmes was doing. He had been in and out in relation to some case all week, but I had not beaten him home in over a month. I usually found him smoking in front of the fire when I finally finished at the hospital, cold cuts waiting for me on the table. He had eaten long before, but often he would join me as I ate, flipping through his commonplace books or thinking through his case aloud. I appreciated the gesture—both the food and the company. I rarely knew when I would arrive home, so Mrs. Hudson could not plan a supper time around me, but the hospital was so busy that I rarely had time to eat at midday, and I always enjoyed hearing about his cases.

Stopping every few steps to keep myself upright, it took several minutes for me to reach the landing, and I squinted into the darkened sitting room.

The chairs were empty, and the fire was out. Holmes was not thinking in the dark, as he so frequently did when I was not home, and I decided I would rather build one fire than two. Turning down the gas for the first flight and up the gas for the second, I rounded the corner and began climbing the stairs to my room.

Using the railing, I pulled myself up one step, then two. I stopped for a moment after the third, trying to make my leg cooperate, and leaned heavily on the banister for the fourth.

My leg tried to buckle on the fifth, and I rested against the banister again, peering up the staircase as I waited for the muscles in my leg to stop convulsing so I could walk. I was more than tempted to turn back to the sitting room. If I built the fire high enough and grabbed a book, I could make it appear that I had accidentally fallen asleep reading instead of being unable to climb a simple staircase.

I glanced back towards the sitting room. If I wanted to turn back, I would have to do it now. Down was always harder than up.

My leg relaxed, and I turned back towards my room. I would be more comfortable in my own bed than I would on the settee, and if Holmes returned in the early hours of the morning, he would be less likely to wake me if I was upstairs.

Still using the banister as an extra balance point, I pulled myself up another step, then a second. My leg was still relaxed, and I skipped a rest and went for a third.

Every muscle around the injury seized, and my leg buckled beneath me before I could shift my weight. My cane clattered to the ground, bouncing its way to rest on the landing below as I tried to grab the banister with my good arm, but my grasping hand missed. Pain exploded, and I knew no more.


	2. Chapter 2

Sherlock Holmes walked quickly, scanning faces, alleyways, and the sidewalk in front of him as he hurried down the street. The downpour turned people into shapes and shapes into shadows, confusing streets and alleys as everything gained the shimmering reflection of a steady rain beneath streetlamps, and he struggled to pick out faces from the few shapes that moved about him.

Where was he?

He turned onto another street, following yet another possible path to Baker Street from the hospital. Lightning cracked overhead, followed by a muted peal of thunder, and a stray dog hurried out of the alley next to him, yelping in fear at the noise in the sky, but he ignored them all, hurrying through the storm as he focused on his search to the exclusion of all else.

Had he been attacked?

The doctor had been working longer and longer hours, coming home later and later as he worked to establish the network he needed for a practice in the city, but never before had he been out so late without sending word.

The clock tower tolled the hour, barely audible over the simultaneous rumble of thunder, and he turned on another street.

When Watson had not returned an hour after his normal time, Holmes had wondered if an emergency patient had come into the hospital. When two hours had passed, he made no attempt to hide his worry as he paced the empty flat. When three hours had passed, he had left a note in Watson’s chair and gone out to look, wondering if his flatmate had fallen afoul of some ruffian in the dark. The doctor had been working himself to exhaustion for the last several weeks, and the inclement weather had done nothing to help the limp Watson tried to hide. Worn from a long day treating patients, he would be no match for someone determined to line their pockets with his supplies.

One street after another remained empty, however, and he began to wonder if he had missed the doctor in the murk. London streets were dark any night, but the rain currently washing the city made everything even darker, and it would be easy to miss someone even on the opposite side of the street.

A quick check at the hospital revealed that Watson had already left, though the nurse with which he spoke had no idea when, and he turned his steps back towards Baker Street, again taking a direct but safe route. Watson would not have cut through the more dangerous alleys, but he also would not have taken any detour. Not with how badly he had been limping that morning.

The flat appeared out of the gloom without him seeing anyone else on the streets, and he hurried forward, checking the windows in the hopes that Watson had beaten him home, but the flat was dark. Watson had not returned.

Or perhaps the doctor had gone straight to bed. That could explain the dark flat. Nodding to the Irregular huddled in a nearby doorway, he quietly let himself in, deciding to check before he continued looking.

A dripping wet coat hung on the rack above a familiar umbrella, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Watson must have taken a different route from the hospital, for whatever reason, but at least he was home. Holmes could hear nothing from the rooms above, and he tried to stay quiet as he took off his own coat and hat and turned toward the stairs. If Watson had gone to bed, Holmes would take no chance of waking him. Too many nights over the last fortnight had been punctuated by the doctor’s tossing and turning.

Turning toward the stairs, his foot brushed against something in the shadows, and he glanced down. Watson’s medical bag sat near his umbrella, and Holmes frowned, the deductions rapidly falling into place. Watson rarely deviated from his routine, and never without good reason. To leave his bag downstairs meant he did not want to carry it upstairs, and the only reason he could have for not carrying the bag to the sitting room would be if he did not want to bother with it on the stairs. Given that Watson’s cane was _not_ resting near the door, Watson had taken his cane and left his bag, and the wet handprint on the banister finished the reasoning.

Foregoing a light, he walked softly and near the edge of each step to avoid the noise carrying upstairs as he quietly made his way up to the second level, wondering if Watson had chosen to sleep in the sitting room, as he occasionally did when his leg made the stairs too difficult. If he had, he would no doubt have a book nearby to make it appear he had fallen asleep reading. Holmes had nearly smirked the first time he had noticed the deflection, but he had said nothing, then or since. It was not in Watson’s nature to announce his injuries any more than it was his own, and Holmes would not point out that the presence of the book did not negate the presence of the cane or the uneven footprints on the rug.

The sitting room was dark, darker than the stairs, and he stood in the doorway for a long moment, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. If Watson was asleep, Holmes did not want to turn up the gas, but he also wanted to make sure Watson’s lateness in getting home was not due to some misfortune in a London alley. If Watson was injured, he would be more likely to sleep on the settee than to climb the extra flight of stairs to his room, his dislike at calling attention to an injury warring with the military—and medical—instincts to never leave himself trapped.

The darkened room remained empty, however, and there were no indications that Watson had even entered. Watson must have gone straight to bed when he had gotten home, and Holmes decided to seek his own bed. Watson’s bedroom was above the sitting room; anything Holmes did in there carried the possibility of waking the doctor, and watching his flatmate grow more and more exhausted as night after night yielded no sleep made Holmes willing to stay quiet for one night. After walking the streets of London, he was tired enough to sleep, anyway.

He rounded the corner, deciding to enter his room from the base of the stairs instead of through the sitting room as he usually did, and he noticed Watson had left the gas slightly on.

A grin twitched his face. Watson had been griping just a few days before at how little light from the street reached the stairs, and their light fixtures were just far enough apart to make it inconvenient to backtrack to turn one off after turning the next one on. Watson had likely left it lit on the chance that Holmes returned that night, knowing Holmes would not turn it on himself. The doctor firmly held that walking around in the dark was a fine way to get hurt.

He could see just fine without the light, however, and he reached to turn it off on the way to his room. Focused on extinguishing the wall fixture, he paid no attention to his feet, and only having his hand so close to the wall prevented him from landing flat on his back when his foot came down on something long and round. The object clattered away as he fought to regain his balance, and he frowned, wondering what that had been. Watson never left his things lying in the middle of the floor. He chided Holmes far too often for doing that to do it himself.

Whatever had made him trip had rolled away, and he looked at the floor before he moved again. Following the sound, he quickly noticed the long, thin shape now resting in the sitting room’s doorway. What was Watson’s cane doing in the middle of the floor?

The worry returning, he turned away from the wall fixture towards the base of the stairs to Watson’s room, but barely he had rounded the corner before he nearly tripped again.

This time, it was a leg stretching across his path. Watson lay at the bottom of the stairs, unmoving.

“Watson!”

There was no response, and it was simple to deduce what had happened as he knelt next to the doctor. Holmes could have kicked himself. How long had Watson been crumpled at the bottom of a flight of stairs while he futilely searched the darkened streets? He should have set up a relay among the Irregulars on the chance that Watson beat him home.

Remembering the few medical classes he had taken years before, he carefully checked for injuries even as he tried and failed to get the doctor to respond. A large knot on the side of Watson’s head was the only injury Holmes found, however, which explained the lack of response but did nothing for his worry.

Recalling something from those long-ago classes about taking caution when moving someone unconscious from a fall, he left Watson at the base of the stairs and stepped over to the window. A quick glance showed that the Irregular he had noticed earlier had not moved, and he tugged the curtains to catch the boy’s attention. When the shape turned to look, he gave one of the signals he had recently taught every Irregular. The shadow bolting down the street proved the boy had understood the message, and Holmes went back to Watson’s side.


	3. Chapter 3

I woke to a pounding in my head that matched the one usually in my leg, and confusion filled me. Where was I?

Everything hurt, from my aching head to my throbbing leg and everything in between, and I held still, hoping the pain would fade if I didn’t move. My thoughts felt sluggish, and I tried to fight my way through the confusion to figure out what had happened. What had I done, that I would hurt so much? This was not the normal collection of aches resulting from a long day, but the last hazy memory I could recall was treating cholera patients at the charity hospital.

Holding still helped, at least to some degree, and I tried to categorize what I was feeling. My head hurt; I had already established that. My leg hurt, but my leg always hurt; that was normal. So was the pain in my shoulder, though I wished I could readjust to pull my weight off it. The rest of the pain seemed to be shallow, surface-level, and I tried to focus. What did the pain remind me of?

“Watson?”

I flinched, losing my train of thought as the unnaturally loud sound amplified the pain in my head, and the pain returned with the movement. After a long moment, it occurred to me that the sound had been a voice and the voice had said my name, and I tried to open my eyes.

It was harder than it should have been to pull myself fully awake, and I realized how tired I was. Something in the back of my mind chimed that these symptoms sounded familiar, and I fought to recall it even as I fought to open my eyes.

That diagnosis was slow in coming, but as I opened my eyes, I suddenly realized of what the other pain reminded me. Bruises. I was bruised from head to toe.

What had I done?

I thought about that as my blurry vision slowly came into focus, but the memory refused to come, and I left it for later. Dim colors coalesced into shapes, and shapes formed the half-lit image of Holmes, leaning over me with worry in his gaze.

“Watson?” I could tell he was speaking quietly, but the word was still painfully loud, and I covered another flinch. He reduced his voice to a faint whisper as he continued, “Watson, can you understand me?”

I nodded once, the pain in my head spiking with the movement, and looked around, trying to decide where I was. I was lying flat on my back, but the furniture was too narrow to be my bed, for all that I could feel the heat of the fire on my face, and too soft to be a hospital bed. Holmes’ armchair, pulled to sit within reach of the settee, finally came into focus, and I realized I was in the sitting room.

“What happened?” I asked, barely more than mouthing the words as I gave up on trying to remember anything.

“I arrived home to find you at the base of the stairs,” he said, still keeping his voice low. “I sent an Irregular for a doctor and tried to wake you, but you refused to respond. He decided you had a concussion and helped me move you to the settee.”

Pieces of memories returned as he spoke, and I looked around the room again as I remembered more. How long had it been?

I struggled to make my eyes focus on the mantle clock, but I did not need to. Holmes noticed the direction of my gaze and answered without me having to ask.

“I returned home just over an hour ago,” he told me.

I finally focused on the clock as he spoke, and I realized he had arrived not ten minutes after me.

“What in the world made you try to climb the stairs when you were that tired?” he asked, the faintest trace of worry still showing in his gaze. He had not expected to come home from whatever case he was researching to find me in a heap at the base of the stairs.

I tried to shrug and nearly winced as my shoulder proclaimed the stupidity of such a movement. “I thought I could make it to my room,” was my slightly delayed—and probably slightly slurred—reply. My head still pounded a counter rhythm to my pulse, and I could tell my thoughts were rather sluggish, but I seemed to have emerged otherwise unscathed, which was surprising given the steepness of our steps.

My shoulder’s throbbing increased, forcing me to shift in an attempt to pull my weight off it, and I gasped as pain flared.

“Watson?”

The underlying question was clear in his tone, but I ignored him as I tried to decipher it for myself. The pain had come from my leg, and it was only when I moved. As soon as I stopped moving, it subsided back to the overall ache of my many bruises.

I shifted again, needing to get my weight off my bad shoulder even though I clenched my jaw as the pain flared again. This time, I managed to trace it to my knee, and, forgetting that he had said I had a concussion, I tried to sit up to look.

My headache spiked, and I fell back against the settee as the room spun.

“—son! Answer me, Watson!”

His commanding tone seemed to echo in my throbbing head, and I could not smother a groan. “Not so loud, Holmes.”

A chill caressed my hand, and I realized he had sighed.

“Doctor Thompson said you would need to rest for the next day or two,” he said, a quieter version of his normal stoic tone replacing the commanding one of a moment before. An element of reproof crept in as he continued, “He also said you would know that.”

I swallowed hard, trying to hide a grimace at the mounting pain in my knee. The radiating pain was doing a spectacular job at clearing my thoughts, but I almost wished I could go back to being confused if it would deaden the agony. I had done something to it when I fell, and it would take more than a couple of days of rest for me to be mobile again.

“Answer a question for me?” I finally asked as I opened my eyes, and he nodded. “What color is my right knee?”

He stared at me for a long moment, perhaps wondering if the head injury I had sustained had given me more than a headache, but he finally did as I asked. Unable to sit up without the world spinning, I followed his movements through feel as he first lifted the blankets, then slowly rolled up my trouser leg. His silence told me what I had expected to hear.

“Swollen and bruising, is it not?” I asked when the silence stretched too long, and he nodded and started to turn away.

“I shall call Thompson back.”

“No.” He froze at my voice and looked back at me. “There is no need to call another doctor when I am perfectly capable.”

He stared at me for a moment. “You cannot even sit up.”

“If Doctor Thompson was going to treat my knee,” I ground out, just as irritated at his hesitance as at the knowledge that my irritation was a result of the concussion, “he would have had to do it before I woke. Where is my bag?”

He stared at me for a moment too long, and I reached up to grab the back of the settee, intending to pull myself upright—however slowly—to get it myself. I refused to be treated by another doctor so long as I had any say in the matter, concussion or no. Not after Afghanistan.

He stopped me, waiting until I relaxed back into the cushions before leaving the room. I heard him go down the stairs, then come back up a moment later, and he placed the bag next to the settee as I considered how I was going to do this.


	4. Chapter 4

“Do you have any knowledge of medicine?”

Holmes looked up in surprise at the question. Medicine? How and when would he have learned medicine?

His look of confusion must have answered the quiet question, and Watson chuckled, flinching as the motion jarred his head.

“You mean you have no medical knowledge stored in that brain-attic of yours?”

“Nothing relating to concussions or falling down the stairs,” he answered with a minute shrug. “You know I keep only pertinent information.”

Watson smirked. “So, there is never any chance of injury in your cases? You are never in a multi-level building or anywhere where an injury aside from a knife-wound could result?”

He made no answer, and Watson’s smirk grew before changing to a grimace as he moved wrong.

“Well,” Watson continued, “delete it later if you wish, but if you are willing, I would appreciate the extra pair of hands.”

Holmes fidgeted, preferring to call Thompson back—the other doctor had missed the injury. He should have to fix it—but he moved to help. Watson barely hid a grimace of pain with every movement, and Holmes did remember reading something about injuries getting worse the longer they went untreated. It had been bad enough finding his flatmate at the bottom of the stairs; he would not want to make the injury worse just because he was uncomfortable.

It was simpler than he had expected. Watson guided him through checking the joint and explaining what it felt and looked like, and Watson decided he had pulled—perhaps torn—some ligaments in his knee. More patiently than Holmes would have been able to do, especially while in as much pain as the doctor was experiencing, Watson carefully walked him through preparing a compress and a bandage, then told him what would need to be done at certain stages.

“But I should be able to walk you through that when the time comes,” he finished, looking much more comfortable with his knee stabilized and propped up on a pillow. He tried to hide it, but Holmes could tell that, though his knee felt much better, the headache had only gotten worse.

“What else?” he asked, disguising the question as a reference to Watson’s knee as he tried to decide if Watson needed a pain reliever of some sort. Were those all injections? He could handle that without a problem, but he thought Watson had mentioned a powder at one point.

Watson waved the question aside as he sank into the cushions. “That—that’s it.”

His halting words slurred together slightly, and Holmes frowned. Was that supposed to happen? Thompson had said nothing about slurred speech, and he vaguely remembered his one medical class teaching that someone with a concussion needed to stay awake. Did that apply only to just after the injury, or to a set time frame afterwards?

He did not remember, and Watson made no response to his name, already asleep.

Keeping his gaze on Watson’s sleeping form, he leaned against the bookshelf, trying to remember anything more, but his one lesson on concussions had been frustratingly vague. With Watson unable to answer questions and Doctor Thompson home abed, he had to find another way to make sure all was right. On the handful of cases with which Watson had helped thus far, very few of those had resulted in injuries to either one of them, and most of those Watson had treated, no matter if the injured party was himself or someone else. If Watson was unavailable for some reason, there had always been another doctor either nearby or easily reachable, until now. If Watson was willing to try to stand when his eyes kept crossing to avoid being treated by another doctor, Holmes could not send another runner to Doctor Thompson. He would need to find another way to obtain the information he needed. Where could he find information when the one he usually asked could not answer?

He scowled as the answer came immediately. The same way he studied anything else new, of course: books. Knowing Watson kept a stack of medical texts in his room, Holmes hurried up the stairs.

Carrying the pamphlets and few textbooks back down to the sitting room, he stacked them near his armchair and paged through slowly, first reaffirming that sleep and slurred speech were expected after a concussion before beginning to research other portions of the text. Watson would wake up eventually, and with several days of bed rest ahead of him, he would no doubt be willing to answer any questions Holmes had. For now, however, Holmes could begin with the same books Watson used to keep his skills fresh.

Aside from it being pertinent to his work as a consulting detective, it was rather hard for a doctor to treat himself, and Holmes completely understood a hesitance in trusting another doctor.

After all, how many times had he crudely sewn up a wound instead of seeing the Yard physician or asking Watson for help?

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is always greatly appreciated :)


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